Pain

Wowzers!  I have a whole new appreciation for people that live with chronic pain.

I've never had chronic pain.

Until the cartilage in my right knee dissolved and now I walk bone-on-bone.  Which hasn't been too bad until about six months ago. 

Yup, last summer and fall I joined ranks with a group of people that live in chronic pain.  I'm not really a full-fledged member because a cortisone shot cleared my pain up and I was BLESSED with no more pain.

For about three months.

The doctor thinks the shoveling I did with the massive snowfall in December "overstimulated my knee" and the pain came back.  And it was worse than before.

For the first time in my life, something was keeping from sleeping.  I can sleep anywhere and I can fall asleep within seconds of crawling into bed.

Until the knee pain came back.

There have been a couple of nights where I could be found crawling into the bathtub at 1 a.m. to give relief to my knee.  The warm water seemed to help.

There were nights when sleeping in the recliner was the only way to get relief.

So back for a second cortisone shot I went.  The relief has come but now I have breakthrough days.  Meaning, I "feel" the ache in my knee despite the wonderful cortisone living in there.  It has been disappointing that I have these breakthrough days.

My primary care doctor, whom I have the utmost respect for, listened as I shared my disappointment.  He then leaned toward me and said, "You have arthritis.  Arthritis is a painful disease.  You are going to be able  to predict weather patterns."

He wasn't being mean.  I appreciated that he was candid with me.  I'd been thinking the cortisone wasn't working!

Hmmm....weather predicting.  Could that become a paying job?  I just have to figure out if we are "in" the weather pattern when my knee aches or if the aching means a weather pattern is "on the way".  TV weather people, look out....I may be taking over your job!  Ha! Ha!

Drugs were offered to me to help with the pain.  Prescription drugs.  I just am not ready to go that route.  I am not a pill-popper and the thought of needing pain meds just doesn't sit well with me.  Glucosamine chondrotin I do take.  A friend recommended making a concoction of cartilage and bone marrow from poultry, beef or pork, which I do.  I make my own stock for soups and broths so I am drinking the cooked up carcasses (that sounds gross when I type it out this way...).  There is documentation that this could help rebuild and/or strengthen the cartilage I do have. 

On our Christian radio station, there is a devotional each day by Anne Graham Lotz.  I try to listen to this devotional each morning as I am making Kidlet Three's lunch.  One morning I caught just the tail end of what she was saying but it was these words:

In times of adversity...look up.  Look up.  Look up and find Jesus.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 has become a truth to me as well.  In Christ, I am strong.  Without Him, I am weak.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Pain.  It is drawing me closer to my Lord and Savior.  And, with Him, the pain actually diminishes. 

Isn't that amazing!